Saturday, June 20, 2009

Now I can imagine a few people would read this and immediately condemn this as a frivolous lawsuit without merit. Apparently, Oprah teamed up with Kentucky Fried Chicken for some sort of free chicken givewaway, which required printing out an online coupon and taking it to your local KFC. But instead of getting free chicken, you get the runaround:

Thing is, demand was so high that the company had to scale back the offer, asking customers who had printed the online coupons to visit stores for an IOU voucher that included a free Pepsi. Customers were asked to mail it in and wait for a different coupon that would allow them to claim the meal later on. According to this story, from the Daily Press, those new coupons should get to customers in a week or so.

Apparently that made somebody so mad they're launching a class action lawsuit, claiming KFC profited by using the promotion to get people to spend money at their restaurant that they hadn't intended to spend. Now I know what you're thinking but I have to be honest; if I showed up with a coupon that I'd printed out, and they told me I'd have to take an IOU which I then have to mail in in exchange for another coupon that I use to get my free meal I'd be pretty dang irritated about that. Why can't I just get a different coupon at the store that can be redeemed at a later date? It seems to me that KFC was rather obviously trying to make it more difficult to take advantage of the offer, thus reaping the benefit of promotion on Oprah's show without actually having to give away all that food that would entail. I think I'd decline to sue in the end, but the thought would probably cross my mind more than once. Sometimes you just get tired of a big company messing with you.